—————————Shuichi—————————
Shadows began to drip and flow from the man's cloak and the liquid shadows began to make them tired. Atlas tried to absorb the mana but the more he absorbed, the more tired he became. Atlas was subsequently put to sleep as the masked man finally revealed his magic's effect. "We're gonna die, I can't die, I'm not cut out for this." He thought aloud before remembering, they were slavers and they had killed some of them, they were more likely to be tortured before being sold for a high price. "That's so much worse." He said. He ran lightning throughout his system to fight the sleep but it eventually overcame him as well. Luckily the lightning allowed him to wake up much sooner than atlas as well. Shuichi's eyes fluttered open slowly. He took in his surroundings. He hadn't been collared yet and neither had atlas but they were in some sort of building walking down some halls, the dark damn and prison-like architecture resembling a poorly made animal stable was a dead giveaway that they were in some godforsaken dungeon. He couldn't even be mad at Atlas, well shouldn't, he was still mad at him, couldn't have been his own fault they were caught so I must obviously be Atlas's, but Atlas had been performing better than he could have expected, but not more than he could ask for. He looked up ahead and his stomach churned, just up ahead was a rack with slave collars, all with viable bronze and iron auras. Those would surely be too strong for them to break free from. First, he needed to wake up Atlas. He sent a shock of electrical mana through Atlas. Its effects were diminished as part of the electricity was absorbed while the majority coursed through his internal organs and nervous system causing Atlas to spaz awake and out of the man's grasp. As he bent over to pick up the boy, Shuichi released lightning from every pore turning himself into a bioelectric bomb blasting the cloaked figure back.
——————Atals——————
Atlas was still dazed and confused but seeing he was in some sort of combat situation, he activated one of his guardian class abilities, improved reflexes, slowing down everything giving him more time to react to incoming stimuli. He saw the cloaked figure and Shuichi exploding. After the figure was blasted back Shuichi dropped to the floor. Atlas drew on his ice magic and flooded it with as much mana as he could at a time freezing the figure in place. He ran to Shuichi's side. "Shuichi!?"
The boy didn't respond from his curled-up fetal position on the floor, but he began to move, "Atlas?"
"Let's go now!" Atlas grabbed Shuichi pulling him up to his feet and they began to walk away until they heard a deep reverberating groan from the ice before a load snapped and crack. When they turned back, they saw the man had not only survived but was breaking the ice from within. They ran, heading down the hall, up some stairs, and through a door into a building with a completely different atmosphere. The walls instead of brick and stone were more seamless, smooth, and painted like by magic they were erected from the floor. The room they were in was filled with slaves connected to a hall locked away by bolted double doors. The slaves were of various types, Atlas recognized elves, humans, dwarves, and various types of half breeds. They were all young or children that were clearly battered and beaten. Their tattered clothes rustled as they ran to a far corner of the room. There were about 17 of them in total, Atlas did the only thing he'd probably respond to if he were in their shoes, "We were kidnapped and almost forced to be slaves… so we're gonna go. Let's break their chains."
The slaves began to look around wildly getting defensive. Shuichi held up his hands to calm them as he walked over to one of the slaves and grabbed their wrist lifting it to the light, he looked the chains over before sighing. "They are suppression based like the collars."
Atlas frowned, but then he smirked as he placed his hand on the chain draining it of mana before flash freezing the chains and snapping them on all of the slaves at once.
One of the slave girls spoke up, she had white hair and pointed ears but other than that she looked human, "There are guards out there and with all the noise you made they will be waiting for you out there." Her voice wasn't as shaken as he had expected. "I'm Estella Rogueshire, these are my parents." She pointed to a white-haired dark-skinned elf and muscular man. "I have ice and wood magic I could use to barricade the door?"
He looked her up and down, looking at her now he noticed she did have a toned body but she didn't seem to have a class. "You aren't classified? And I've never seen white-haired dark-skinned Elves."
Shuichi stepped on his foot, "sorry for my friend, atlas, I'm Shuichi. They aren't Elves, don't be disrespectful, they are Drow, strange they are here, her mother must have been some sort of adventurer, the Drow live at the edges of the continent and use different magic than us."
Atlas froze, "their own type of magic?"
Shuichi looked over to him, "yes, there are ways to magic outside of classes, growing up around adventurers you learn a lot of ways to get magic."
And like that his world had expanded, more ways of using and getting magic, "what's the most common?"
Shuichi let out an exasperated sigh, "Not now, we gotta go. Don't barricade us in, make a tunnel around us with some holes in it if you have that much control, that gives us cover while we can see what we're heading into."
She shrugged and her mother gripped her shoulder before turning to the two boys, "I'll provide cover fire." Wooden spikes began forming in the air around her. "I'm Ramona." Atlas and Shuichi nodded before they burst through the doors into the room as ice and wood grew around them protectively. The room was filled with guards fighting, on closer inspection, they noticed 4 that didn't look like Guards including a scarlet haired and dressed teen Witch, what looked like a dark knight of some sort, a bloodied boy with red eyes, and another boy who seemed to lead the pack with his strange single-sided swordsmanship, he had to be used to different types of swords cause although it still worked well, it looked awkward in his hands. They couldn't have been much older than himself. The boy in the lead turned to him, "More enemies?"
—————————Zena—————————
She was furious, she had tracked the smell of her former lover to this Slavers' Den. Either he was here messing with slaves which he promised he wouldn't, or they had enslaved him. In any case, the rage was the necessary emotion for this occasion. She ran up to the back doors that were being guarded by two men in heavy armor. They turned their heads to face her but it was too late, she swiped her arm across their throats painting their necks red as her eyes danced along the stream of crimson, "Maybe a Quick taste." She began drinking their blood directly from their necks when a servant girl walked by the open doors to see the gruesome sight, "Hiya!" Zena tried to say through mouth fulls of blood. The girl ran screaming alerting the guards in the hall. Zena sighed before she walked in and so began her blood bath, by the time she was done she felt a chill, "A golden aura? But it feels far too uncontrolled to be one gained via murder or cultivation, a mana crystal abuser. The one behind all of this maybe. Reeks of a slave master's cheap way to power." She ran up the steps where she could sense the slave master. She made it to a long hall, at the end of the hall were a pair of double doors that she knew must lead to the slave master. She blurred and kicked the doors off their hinges, "Where is he?" She shouted as she barged in, she walked into a very compromising scene, the old man who seemed like he took bodily health care seriously who she assumed was the slave master was naked facing two nude slave girls with a slave boy massaging his back as one of the slave girls began servicing him even with Zena right there. The man looked up at Zena confused, "I don't care what your noble status is, auction hours are over and this area is not for customers… unless…"
Her sharp words stopped him in his tracks, "I'll stop you right there. If you're after hours then I'm looking for a slave, he should have a mark on his shoulder that looks like 4 dragons eating each other's tails in a loop, he should have-"
The Slavemaster cut her off, "No we don't have a slave like that."
"I didn't even finish, what's the slave's name."
"We just got a few new slaves and they've only sent me a brief description of them but from what I've been told that's not one of them." She froze, almost all of her senses were telling him it was the truth but she could smell and feel him here. He had to be here, and if it weren't for the faint hint at the corners of his lips tugging into a small smirk, she'd have maybe believed he probably didn't know yet but that was the face of a man who thought he had checkmate her. He thought she'd leave him, he'd warn them of her arrival and when she arrived he'd be gone and when she came back he'd be gone. It wasn't a rare tactic, in a world where someone can be literally 100 times stronger than you, you need to know how to outwit them. Unfortunately for this man, she was stronger and smarter.
"Liar!" Venom filled her voice. "I know he's here, you know I already have a distaste for slavery and now you lie to me." She rushed to meet him but a man leaped forward tackling her. The man had a collar on and chains but the chains seemed to be connected to some sort of power source amplifying the power of the slave but even this slave's strength paled in comparison to her own. She tossed him back and rushed right up to the slave master but he pulled chains from a dimensional storage ring, devices that were imbued with a form of space-time magic to allow them to hold items with no disadvantage to the user. The chains flowed almost endlessly from the ring in her direction as if they were trying to consume her. She expressed a golden aura and then contained it to just her forearm creating a translucent golden aura and then she imbued it with necrotic decay mana. The chains crashed into her cloaked arm and were deflected before rusting and breaking apart the chains. "This is the difference between us, control."
—————————Torui—————————
Torui Led the group up a hill within the forest where they came across a building with two corpses outside the back door, guards that had died seemingly doing their job. The building read "Randal's Slave Auction House." They entered the building to see a woman cutting her way through a hall full of armored men and women with her bare hands. "Let's go the other way."
Sui looked confused, "it's a vampire maybe we can pact her."
Torui picked up a cleanly severed arm while staring at a corpse whose face was still stuck in shock and surprise, "I doubt we'd have the chance."
Nui nodded, "I'm all for checking out shady places but isn't this out of the way?"
Torui crossed his arms, "Because we're gonna rob them. It's an auction house and in my world slavery has been long since abolished in most parts of the world, I can't see it happen here."
Nui shrugged and smiled while Saphra shrugged. Saphra began to walk down the hall opposite of the rampaging vampire and out to a stairwell, "let's check the place out. Sui help Torui establish a temporary dungeon boundary with the core so we can locate their treasure."
Sui took Torui's hand and the core, "spread your aura through the core and expand its aura using your own, you'll be able to sense everything in the dungeon radius."
Torui began following his instructions, grasping at the concept on an aura wasn't as hard as he expected, his years of meditation and breathing allowed him to quickly regain that calm meditative state. Like this, he could easily feel his aura like another sense. He began to spread the aura through the core but it wasn't that long before he found what he assumed to be the treasure room.
Torui smirked, "Upper basement." They all ran down the steps reaching the upper basement, with most of their forces on vampire duty it was a sure shot… but the one and only room there was locked. He used his Eldridge Sight to look at the door's magic and was surprised to find what looked like locks made of transparent mana and a wall of transparent mana.
Sui activated his sight as well and sighed, "magically sealed, we'll need to hit it with something-"
"Inflammas Exortum!" Saphra shouted as she blasted a hole through the locks.
Torui smiled, "Damn girl, that was quick."
She smirked as she pushed the door open, "What can I say, I'm efficient." They began stuffing their bags with various weapons, magic items, gems, and coins. Before the room was surrounded, "whoops, guess there was a silent alarm." She said sheepishly.
Torui grabbed a stone with a symbol on it off the wall before aiming it at them, "wonder what this does." Nothing happened, "how do I activate this?"
The guards started swarming into the room as Sui shouted, "use your mana on it!"
He panicked and did as Sui said plying his mana to the stone before it lit up sending several arcs of electricity through the guards entering. "Whoa." They ran out of the room and down the hall before reaching what looked like a main hall or lobby. The lobby was filled with guards. They all drew their swords and readied themselves for combat.
Nui was attacked first he visibly relished the chance to do battle. He deflected one of their blades and thrust his hand into their gut releasing his raw mana outward creating hellish flames on the guard's torso before igniting their entire body on fire. Saphra was next but having been building her mana up till now she was able to quickly release it in bursts of flames to blast her assailants back. Torui and Sui on the other hand took the initiative to strike first with Torui taking the lead. Suddenly one of the rooms burst open and more slaves and what they assumed to be young guards came pouring out, "More enemies? Sui, I need you to handle them." Sui took a step back, he seemed peeved by the request but he ultimately just sighed and went to meet the two new guards and their platoon of magic slaves. One of the guards proceeded to fire an icy wind at Sui slowing him while pushing him back while the other followed up with a bolt of lightning sending Sui back. The guard shouted to his electric friend, "I'm gonna fill in the gaps in our cover, you get the slaves out of here I'll be right behind you."
"Okay, I- Atlas we have to run!" The second guard's face blanched. In the room they had just come from was a cloaked figure. He ran towards them but the other guard, Atlas pushed out an icy wave at him pushing him back while slowing him before the second guard electrified the floor behind all of the slaves separating them from the figure.
The guard named Atlas nodded before running faster than most if not all of the slaves could keep up with while others provided cover even attacking other guards. "Hey guys wait up, I don't think those are guards, or if they are, they are helping the slaves. Let's follow them. Their magic was pretty strong too and if they aren't on their side maybe they'd like to join us." Torui said.
Saphra gapped, "Already moving on to pacting intelligent creatures. You sure catch on fast and you're quite the leader even if you don't think things through."
Torui kissed his teeth, "ouch if you didn't like my ideas you should have said something."
She chuckled, "No no I don't have any other ideas and your tone doesn't leave much room for doubt. Let's go!" She shouted over the sound of blades clashing as the figure ran into the room, "Guys get low!" Nui, Sui, and Torui all heeded her words without a second thought. A wave of flames lept from every pore of her skin burning the guards and sending them as well as the figure back.
Nui didn't waste any time running off after Atlas and his partner, "I call the anemic looking one, Atlas."
Sui looked at him confused, "Anemic?"